Every week, I share newsworthy articles that have caught my attention. These news stories cover 31st to 4th April 2025.
Indexing and SEO: 9 steps to get your content indexed by Google and Bing
A question that I was faced fairly recently with a client website was why certain new pages were taking a long time to index despite pages being crawled. This article points to ways to sort out issues via GSC, which is my go-to tool. 304 is overkill, in my opinion, unless you have an extremely large website, but the article contains some sound advice throughout. In my case, the website in question was built and left dormant for a long time. Indexation was sluggish. My solution was to boost internal linking and add fresh content changes throughout the website to kickstart regular bot crawl with the help of the URL inspect tool.
Source: https://searchengineland.com/content-indexing-seo-google-bing-453748
Google’s Martin Splitt Reveals 3 JavaScript SEO Mistakes & Fixes
Advice provided by Google’s Martin Splitt – Firstly, a lot of SEOs check the source HTML, but Google actually indexes the rendered HTML—using tools like Google’s URL Inspection can help spot issues. Second, JavaScript-heavy sites sometimes return a 200 OK status for error pages instead of a proper 404, which can mess up indexing, so fixing server settings is important. Third, sites that rely on geolocation might accidentally block Googlebot, so adding fallback content makes sure everything gets indexed properly. Splitt suggests using Search Console, browser dev tools, and checking HTTP status codes to catch and fix these problems. A personal method is to run a browser extension to detect the status codes of pages for quick checks.
Data Shows Google AIO Is Citing Deeper Into Websites
Recent data from BrightEdge indicates that Google’s AI Overviews (AIO) are increasingly referencing deeper, specialized content within websites rather than just homepages. This trend suggests that comprehensive, niche-specific pages are more likely to be cited by AIO, emphasizing the importance for website owners to maintain and update their in-depth content. The key is that website content that remains relevant, fresh, and specialised can really enhance visibility within AI-driven search results. Monitor page traffic and start to think about how CRO and internal linking can work if there’s enough referral traffic passed on.
Source:https://www.searchenginejournal.com/data-shows-google-aio-is-citing-deeper-into-websites/543325/
How To Find A Competitor’s Keywords — Next Level
WIth the ever-increasing use of AI, you’d probably be excused to think why keywords still play an important role in search. It’s still very relevant for e-commerce and competition. Meghan Pahinui discusses advanced strategies for discovering competitors’ keywords to enhance SEO performance. Understanding the keywords that drive traffic to competitors’ sites can reveal content gaps and opportunities for improvement. Pahinui outlines various methods with the assistance of keyword SEO tools to analyse competitors’ keyword profiles, identify high-performing keywords, and assess areas where one’s site may be underperforming.
Source: https://moz.com/blog/how-to-find-a-competitors-keywords-next-level
Google Confirms You Can’t Add E-EAT To Your Web Pages
This article is more of a response to annoying statements made by some SEOs to John Mueller, that EEAT (Experience, Expertise, Authority and Trust)is something that can be ‘sprinkled’ onto web pages. What is interesting is that JM has stated that EEAT may apply more so to different website content than others with YMYL and non-YMYL sites.
Source: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-confirms-you-cant-add-eeat-to-your-web-pages/543177/
Robots Refresher: robots.txt — a flexible way to control how machines explore your website
A closer look at robots.txt as a flexible way to tell robots what you want them to do (or not do) on your website.
Source:https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2025/03/robotstxt-flexible-way-to-control
Studies Reveal Consumers Easily Detect AI-Generated Content
It’s interesting to see that users can now suspect wording found in AI-generated content. A recent annoyance highlighted in my LinkedIn was the overuse of the word ‘delve’!
AI-generated images are getting easier to spot. The article points out that there is some reputational damage done to brands with the use of poor and obvious AI. It also states that 50% think less of writers who use AI. My basic position on this is that AI is an exceptionally good tool to use, but the output should always be adjusted and revised manually.
Other reads
Do exact match domains have value in 2025?
https://searchengineland.com/exact-match-domains-value-453837
Agentic AI: if everyone has a digital PA, where does this leave marketers?
Your brand must be available physically, mentally and now for the AI algorithm
SEO for Financial Services: How to Build Trust and Rank Higher in 2025
https://ahrefs.com/blog/seo-for-financial-services
How Do You Explain the Value of SEO? — Whiteboard Friday
https://moz.com/blog/explain-the-value-of-seo-whiteboard-friday
All of the updates about OpenAI
https://www.theverge.com/news/640086/openai-chat-gpt-news-updates
How to Scale Content Creation (Step-By-Step Guide)
https://backlinko.com/scale-content
9 Google Chrome features you really should be using
www.computerworld.com/article/3808893/9-google-chrome-features-you-really-should-be-using.html
The Real-World Impact of Enterprise-Grade Generative AI for CX